Direct feedback and social conformity promote behavioral change via mechanisms indexed by centroparietal positivity: Electrophysiological evidence from a role‐swapping ultimatum game

Abstract

Our behavior is shaped by multiple factors, including direct feedback (seeing the outcomes of our past actions) and social observation (in part, via a drive to conform to other peoples' behaviors). However, it remains unclear how these two processes are linked in the context of behavioral change. This is important to investigate, as behavioral change is associated with distinct neural correlates that reflect specific aspects of processing, such as information integration and rule updating. To clarify whether these processes characterize both direct learning

Neurophysiological correlates of interpersonal discrepancy and social adjustment in an interactive decision-making task in dyads

“…However, our results contradict previous evidence ( Pierguidi et al, 2019 ) that related important negativity around the 200 ms (N2) related to conformity as we did not find such clear negativity in signal in our data, and the credible differences happened after the second interval, from 275 ms on. Nonetheless, other recent findings in ERP conformity studies ( Bogdan et al, 2022 ) found significant differences not in the N2 but in the following positivity. This discrepancy could arise from the differences in the experimental tasks used in the different studies.…”

“…Higher P3b amplitudes are related to target identification in the working memory updating process ( Rac-Lubashevsky and Kessler, 2019 ) which might be relevant in higher-level adjustments associated with social convergence. Furthermore, in a recent study, researchers related centroparietal positivity (CPP) and late positivity (LP) elicited by outcome feedback as a predictor of subjects’ change in their responses ( Bogdan et al, 2022 ). In addition, decision-making studies have also revealed a crucial role of theta oscillatory activity in cognitive control ( Cavanagh et al, 2010 ; Cavanagh and Frank, 2014 ), conflict (see Polich (2007) for a review), and computation of surprises or prediction errors ( Alexander and Brown, 2011 ; Cavanagh et al, 2012 ; Mas-Herrero and Marco-Pallarés, 2014 ).…”

“…However, recently this norm has begun to change. In a recent study, researchers alternated the roles of responder and proposer in an ultimatum game to induce conformity by repetition ( Bogdan et al, 2022 ). This study is the first of its kind using a dual-person paradigm where the decisions are biased by recent interactive history.…”

Social Expectations are Primarily Rooted in Reciprocity: An Investigation of Fairness, Cooperation, and Trustworthiness

“…A total of 40 individuals were recruited from the local university and surrounding community for Study 1 (M Age = 23.1 [18, 39], SD Age = 5.3; 50% female, 50% male). This sample size was chosen because the study recorded electroencephalography (EEG) data (Bogdan et al., 2022), which although not the present focus, influenced the recruitment goals (Boudewyn, Luck, Farrens, & Kappenman, 2018). Of the 40 participants, one was excluded for excessive drowsiness during testing.…”

Intra- and inter-brain synchrony oscillations underlying social adjustment

“…To ll this gap, we propose a novel experimental paradigm in which two people converge spontaneously in estimating a value without being instructed or extrinsically rewarded. To track expectations and prediction errors in the behavior of others', we used a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm that allowed assessing parameters on a trial-by-trial basis, as in previous research on social conformity (see e.g., Klucharev et al, 2009, Toelch & Dolan, 2015Bogdan et al, 2022). We hypothesized that theta oscillatory activity, which, as stated above, has been previously related to the computation of PE and cognitive control (Cavanagh & Frank, 2014; Mas-Herrero & Marco-Pallarés, 2014; van de Vijver et al, 2018), would be associated to synchronization of areas involved in cognitive control and behavioral adjustment.…”